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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (108513)	7/28/2003 11:19:03 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

And some commentary: The day irony failed By Gary LaMoshi During the predawn hours in Manila on Sunday, disgruntled junior officers of the Philippine armed forces seized a shopping and residential complex in the fashionable Makati district. Their act not only spotlighted the soldiers' grievances against the regime of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but it focused attention on how badly the sense of irony fails today's leaders, news media, and, apparently, those of us who abet and tolerate those failures. The 20-hour standoff brought an outpouring of endorsements for the loyalists. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer expressed his nation's support for the "democratically elected government of the president of the Philippines". That declaration must've come as quite a shock to Joseph Estrada, winner of the Philippines' most recent presidential election, in his prison cell, particularly given Australia's previous reticence regarding Estrada's two-and-a-half-year confinement. Similarly, Singapore's Foreign Ministry declared, "The resort to unconstitutional means by the rebels is unacceptable." That statement would have been far more apt at the time of the "People Power II" demonstrations and military maneuvers against Estrada, such as fighter jets buzzing Malacanang Palace, that brought Arroyo to the presidency. Those events also confirmed that following the constitution is hardly a reliable path to power in the Philippines: of the country's last five presidents, only Fidel Ramos entered office via election and left at the end of his legal term. Bush league The US State Department weighed in on the Makati crisis by backing "the legitimate civilian government of the Philippines". The US cleverly avoided use of the word "elected", but any comment on the Philippines from the Bush administration registers big numbers on the irony scale. Presidents George W Bush and Arroyo each took office of the same day, January 21, 2001, with dubious Supreme Court decisions substituting for electoral mandates. Each of these offspring of former presidents has deployed the "war on terrorism" as a cover for their failures to mend their national economies. In fact, Arroyo's embrace of the US anti-terror campaign was a key issue for the rebel soldiers in Makati. It has also been seized upon by unarmed critics as evidence that Arroyo completely misunderstands the genuine concerns of the Philippine people. That's not the only area where Arroyo suffers from delusions. When the Makati standoff was concluded peacefully, Arroyo declared the outcome "a triumph for democracy". Burma shave It wasn't just the Philippines where irony detectors in officialdom failed on Sunday. Malaysia stepped up its pressure on Myanmar's military junta to release Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from detention. Last week, Malaysia refused to let its own political prisoner No 1, former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, out of jail for medical care to treat injuries from beatings he claims he received in captivity. In Washington, as part of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean Armistice, the Pentagon declared that in the event of another military confrontation with North Korea, there would be "no doubt about the outcome: it would be end of that regime". That confident prediction begs the question as to why the United States tolerates Kim Jong-il's moves to produce nuclear weapons rather than ousting this (yet another) presidential changeling filling daddy's shoes who boasts a resume far worse than Saddam Hussein's. It's hard to decide what's more frightening: that political leaders and foreign-affairs and military spokespeople don't see the irony of what they say, or that they see it all and just don't care what they tell us. Does Gloria Arroyo believe she was democratically elected? Does Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad really think he's on the side of justice when he advocates freedom for a political prisoner that threatens a nearby regime's grip on power and captivity for one who may threaten his own? Do George W Bush and Tony Blair think they told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the Iraqi threat? Are they fooling themselves, too, or just us? High-tech Lynch-ing Journalists bear some responsibility for aiding this culture of delusion, contributing to the high irony diet we're all force-fed. For example, here in Asia journalists are guilty of referring to the second-generation president of Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri, as "democratically elected". In fact she was chosen by an assembly of elected and unelected representatives to complete the term of the president that small circle previously chose, without reference to the popular vote, and then impeached on dubious grounds. It's difficult to determine whether journalists should be excused or excoriated when we live in a world where a soldier who gets lost, shot in the ass and captured is hailed as a hero. Aside from the hyping and alleged stage-managing of the Jessica Lynch rescue, the idea that a POW can qualify as a hero violates a basic rule of armed combat that George C Scott articulated as the title character at the start of the movie Patton: "No son of a bitch ever won a war dying for his country. You win wars by making the other son of a bitch die for his country." In today's sophisticated world, perhaps such statements are too devoid of irony to be taken seriously. (Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)